Four new names to be added to Sebastopol’s Peace Wall
The annual public ceremony is this Saturday at 11 am in the downtown plaza
Four more names of peace activists and social justice heroes will be added to Sebastopol’s Peace Wall this Saturday, Sept. 6, at 11 am, in a ceremony that has been taking place almost every year since the installation of the wall in 2015. (The ceremonies were cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic years.)
The public gathering will happen in Sebastopol’s town plaza and gazebo, with the wall’s originator, Michael Gillotti, leading off with a sing-a-long of John Lennon’s “Give Peace A Chance.” The following acceptance speeches are promised to be short, and organizers of the event promise “no angry political speeches.”
Honorees this year include Alice Waco, a co-founder of Sonoma County’s Peace and Justice Center; David Hartsough, a Quaker who was engaged in nonviolent resistance against all U.S.-involved wars since Vietnam; Bob Alpern, a director of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Social Justice; and Gerry Condon, an active member of Veterans For Peace. Both Waco and Hartsough died earlier this year. Condon and Alpern will be present to accept their awards.
Each year, Gillotti and a small nominating committee meet to review public nominations and make their own selections among finalists. Among the previous 36 honorees have been the Pentagon Papers’ Daniel Ellsberg, former East Bay Congresswoman Barbara Lee, labor and nonviolent activist Delores Huerta, former Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey and local peace and justice figures Rev. James Coffee, Tula Jaffe, Susan Chunko and Norman Solomon.
The Peace Wall is a low, 12-foot-long, slightly curved granite structure, located on city property at the corner of Petaluma and McKinley Street, kitty-corner from the downtown plaza and next to Rialto Cinemas. Besides the engraved names of the 40 honorees, the monument also includes quotes from Mahatma Gandhi and Cesar Chavez.
The Wall began as one man’s reaction to too many wars that never seemed to end before another one began. Gillotti, a local musician and Vietnam War conscientious objector, conceived of his idea while seeking to “find some way to acknowledge all the people’s efforts to mobilize for peace and to inspire others to join and continue the efforts. I asked myself, ‘What can I do to slow this down and help find alternatives?’”
As a college student at a midwestern seminary school in the late 1960s, Gillotti applied for Conscientious Objector (CO) status at his local draft board. As his resistance to US involvement in the Vietnam War grew, he abandoned his CO status and wrote to the government about his more militant war resistance.
In 1975, he was tracked down in California and arrested by the FBI. He served six months of community service. With his music and contributions to the Sebastopol Living Peace Wall, Gillotti has been resisting wars and spreading messages for peace ever since.
Gillotti, now 77, admits that the current wars in Gaza and Ukraine, “really get me down. It’s horrible to see what is happening in Gaza every day and for the people of Ukraine to be holding on by a thread.”
This year Gillotti is turning over leadership of the small nonprofit organization to co-leaders Stephen Zollman, Sebastopol’s current mayor, and Alicia Sanchez, a local peace and social justice activist and leader. (Sanchez’s name was added to the Peace Wall in 2015.)
Sebastopol Living Peace Wall is an IRS chapter 501(c)3 registered nonprofit. Annual expenses for monument maintenance, new engravings and honor plaques have been averaging $2,000 a year. Gillotti paid for half of the original construction costs while collecting donations for the remainder.
“We always pass the hat at the annual ceremony and get some generous donations,” he said.
While acknowledging that there’s no direct connection between the Peace Wall and Peacetown, Sebastopol’s summer music series, Gillotti said it’s “more than a coincidence” that the two peace-centered efforts are identified with the small town with a big activist reputation.
“Our annual ceremonies are very sacred and full of renewing energy. It’s all about people trying to create a more loving and peaceful world,” said Gillotti.
Past years’ events have attracted several hundred people. Both this Saturday’s Peace Wall ceremony and the weekly Peacetown concerts in Ives Park include several minutes of silence and meditation.
This year’s honorees
(From the city of Sebastopol staff report on this year’s Peace Wall celebration)
Alice Waco was an ex-nun who dedicated her life to serving others. She was the co-founder of the Peace and Justice Center in Santa Rosa and a continuous supporter of Friends of Cantera, which supported education in Nicaragua. She was a tireless anti-war protester and advocate for all manner of human rights and nonviolence projects. She was also a key player in the 1990 establishment of the sister city program between Santa Rosa and Cherkasy, Ukraine, and was there in 1991 when Ukrainians voted for independence from the Soviet Union. She was a founding member of the Living Peace Wall Selection Committee up until her passing in June, where she helped select worthy candidates to be honored on the Living Peace Wall. It seems only fitting that she herself be honored on the Peace Wall now.
David Hartsough. David was strongly influenced by his Quaker parents and his father’s work with the American Friends Service Committee. At age 15, David met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who became his hero and inspiration for a life of activism. In his 20s, he participated in lunch-counter sit-ins in the South and adopted a belief in the power of nonviolence to change people’s hearts and minds. Some of his many actions to promote peace and justice include attempting to block the aircraft carrier, USS America, from departing for the Vietnam War; engaging in peace keeping missions to Central American war zones in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua; and leading an interfaith delegation to Palestine and Israel. In his powerful book, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist, he chronicled his life of activism and wrote, “We each need to ask ourselves, ‘Who is my family?” Who is my neighbor?’” His activism was based on his belief that we are one human family. Hartsough died in March of this year.
Bob Alpern. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Bob came an active member of SANE, which advocated for banning nuclear testing and for nuclear disarmament. Later, during the Vietnam War, he joined Father Philip Berrigan and the Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission opposing the war. From 1975 to 1995, he served as Director of the Unitarian Universalist Association Washington Office of Social Justice as a lobbyist to Congress. There he worked to normalize Israeli-Palestinian relations and advocated for Palestinian statehood. Finally, from 2014 to 2018, Bob participated in four non-violent direct actions at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to protest its nuclear research for developing new nuclear weapons.
Gerry Condon. While training as an Army Special Forces medic in 1968, Gerry refused orders to deploy to Vietnam and began speaking out against the war and the draft. He escaped from Fort Bragg in North Carolina and fled to Montreal, Canada. In 1969, he was court martialed and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor (which could not be enforced because he was out of the country). He fled to Stockholm, Sweden and, a few years later moved back to Canada. In 1977, Jimmy Carter’s first act as president was to pardon draft resisters. When Gerry returned to the U.S., he organized two Veterans for Peace delegations to Nicaragua, opposing Reagan’s support for the Contras, who at that point had killed 50,000 Nicaraguans. He later coordinated a Veteran’s Peace Convoy to Nicaragua with 39 trucks of humanitarian aid. He became an active member of Veterans for Peace and served as President of Greater Seattle Veterans for Peace 2007-2009 and later served on the Board of Directors of Veterans for Peace, 2012-2020. His involvement in Veterans for Peace continues to this day.
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